This article originally appeared in the March 2015 edition of USA Lacrosse Magazine, two months before Denver won the NCAA championship.
With Hall of Fame coach Bill Tierney set to retire after this season, the school officially announced Matt Brown as his successor last week.
DENVER’S FIRST TRIP TO THE NCAA SEMIFINALS in 2011 was a wake-up call for the national lacrosse community. Former Princeton coach Bill Tierney’s Rocky Mountain project was coming along at lightning speed.
But the Pioneers’ first big voyage east was an equally enlightening experience for nearly everyone in their program, including a young offensive assistant coach, Matt Brown.
If it looked like playing in a big atmosphere, the home of the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens, was throwing off Denver’s typically well-spaced and executed offense, it was. Virginia, which went on to win the NCAA championship, led 9-2 by halftime and won 14-8. Denver’s box lacrosse-inspired two-man pick games built around Mark Matthews and Alex Demopoulos were rendered ineffective.
“We got beat up pretty bad,” Brown said.
You could almost hear the nightmares churning in his head. Brown, 31, is heralded by his peers as one of the brightest lacrosse minds around. A former Pioneers attackman, Canadian Minto Cup veteran and MLL and NLL pro, he’s now in his fifth season working under Tierney and 13th overall at Denver as a player or coach.
He’s so good, his Hall of Fame boss all but named him the next head coach at Denver, a team that has reached two more final fours and entered this season ranked No. 1 in the Nike/Lacrosse Magazine Preseason Top 20. The Pioneers are 3-0 heading into a matchup against No. 5 North Carolina on Friday.
“It’s a no-brainer,” Tierney said. “But hopefully I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. He would never say this to you, but he knows that there aren’t too many guys out there that understand it the way he does.”
What Brown understood back in May 2011 at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore is that Denver not only looked star-struck, but also unprepared for the noise generated by a crowd of 45,000-plus fans. Brown’s booming voice normally sent in play calls. He went unheard. So did the signals he likes to bark out during the game.
There’s a lot of what ifs in Denver’s schemes. The Pioneers read, react and make decisions quickly. Where is the slide coming from? What if it doesn’t? We forget to do things on offense. What if they forget what they’re supposed to do on defense? Why are we doing what we’re doing?
“Typically, I talk through every step,” Brown said. “It will be like I’m playing a video game in practice with these guys, understanding where to go and reads to make.”
None of Brown’s designs worked against Virginia that day. What good is the best-laid plan if the players can’t make out what it is? Denver got wiped off the field.
But just as the Pioneers offenses are known to react, adjust and appear unlike most in college lacrosse, Brown used the same innovative methodology for switching something as simple as calling in plays.
The next season, Brown created signal cards, the kind regularly seen in football but rarely in lacrosse.
There’s one white placard featuring a silhouette of the state of Minnesota, for a member of that 2011 team, Todd Baxter, who grew up there and wore jersey number 24. When Brown holds the sign up, it means get into the 2-4 formation — two attackmen behind goal-line extended, four players above.
For a 2-1-3 set, there’s a black umbrella. A diamond ring adorns another card. Man’s best friend for a play called Dog. Others simply have numbers, representing angles of attack.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Denver’s offense. The Pioneers have finished no worse than sixth nationally in goals per game in each of the last four seasons. They are the only Division I men’s program to do so in that span and have reached three final fours. Brown describes the offense as a fluid document, one that includes upward of 40-50 plays and changes throughout the season, or even a game.
It’s like the Princeton offense in basketball, with an emphasis on cutting and setting picks and screens off passes. Team Canada used the same concepts at the 2014 FIL World Championship. Brown was offensive coordinator for its gold-medal run.
“He’s created an offensive system that is being emulated by a lot of different coaches in the country,” said High Point coach Jon Torpey, who coached Brown as a player his senior year at Denver in 2004 and later worked on the same coaching staff with him there.